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HG Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, the story of a Martian invasion of Earth, has had many adaptations since being published in 1898. It’s unlikely that any of these adaptations has developed such an aura of myth and infamy as the Orson Welles radio adaptation of 1938, which was alleged to have caused mass panic across the United States. Conducted as a drama broadcast via wireless, the program went out uninterrupted for more than an hour and portrayed the events…

It’s hard to believe, but The British Newspaper Archive has now reached the grand old age of three. We launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million fully searchable historic newspaper pages and have come a long way since then.Please click the image to enlarge itA treasure trove of informationYou can now search more than 9 million pages, from over 300 British and Irish newspaper titles, spanning 1710-1954. Reading all of those pages would be no mean feat – we’ve estimated that it would…

Following an ultimatum to withdraw German troops from Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. Monday 4 August 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of the start of Britain’s involvement in World War One.Front pages from the start of World War OneThe news that Britain had joined World War One featured prominently in many of the newspapers printed the following day.Search newspapers from World War OneHere’s a selection of the newspaper headlines announcing Britain’s involvement in WW1.…

We’ve recently donated 100 subscriptions to the Wikipedia community through the Wikipedia Library, a grant-funded programme which makes it easier for experienced volunteer editors to access research materials.It’s very exciting to be involved in this new partnership. It allows us to contribute to Wikipedia, one of the most frequently used reference tools in the world, and demonstrates how local British and Irish newspapers can help improve public information about historical topics from around the world.We asked Simon Tushingham, one…

WW1 editions of the Evening Despatch now onlineThe Evening Despatch was published in Birmingham throughout World War One. Over 4,000 pages from newspapers published in 1915, 1917 and 1918 have just been made available to search online.Search the Evening Despatch  Newspaper pages added every weekThousands of extra pages are added to The British Newspaper Archive each week. We’ll be adding more from the Evening Despatch soon, so be sure to check the recent additions regularly.See what’s been added in the…

Service Announcement – BNA search service maintenance this afternoonThat’s keyword search back up and running. Until two years ago (i.e. pre launch of The BNA!) there wasn’t an option to search these old newspapers by keyword – we certainly missed it for that short maintenance period : )Enjoy!Best wishes,Team BNA…

More content, more quickly! The BNA tech upgrade – an updateWe hope that you have all been enjoying the lovely Summer weather lately?You may have noticed that there has been a slow-down in the number of pages added to the site recently. There is a fantastic reason for this . . . [drumroll please] . . . We are delighted to announce that we have been busy working on upgrading our newspaper ingest and post-processing system. Once we’re up and running with the new system,…

We were delighted (and just a little star-struck!) to see John Bishop using the BNA website in last night’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ programme.John was looking for information on his gg-grandfather, Charles Bishop, who left the army in the 1850s to pursue a musical career, and he found several stories in the Archive about his musical ancestor.We’re going to post a couple of these stories on the blog shortly. But, in the meantime, if you live…

We’re looking forward to learning about the ancestors of John Barnes in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’The listing for the show on the BBC website mentions ‘secret telegrams’ and internment, so we think this will be a very interesting programme, which will shed light on Jamaica’s struggle for independence.Oh, and we’ll be looking out for any historical newspapers that are used in the research on his ancestors.– BBC1, Wednesday 17 October, 21:00.– www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nh6qj…

We really enjoyed hearing about the ancestors of William Roache in last night’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’In particular, we loved learning about the evolution of Blackpool as a blingy mecca for tourists, and the very interesting role that William’s ancestors played in the development of the city.If you live in the UK and missed the programme, you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer.– www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n2thm/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_9_William_Roache/…